Report: Yahoo Planning Google Now, Siri Competitor Codenamed ‘Index’

According to sources of Business Insider, Yahoo is hard at work, making a competitor to Google Now and Apple’s Siri. Reported to feature the ability to index a users’ entire email archive, then spit it back at you in a contextual and helpful manner, the project has been codenamed Index.

Overseen by Yahoo executives Jeff Bonforte and Peter Monaco, who came to Yahoo after their company, Xobni, was acquired, it is reported that the service will be made into an application for smartphones, and will also be ad-supported.

Where Yahoo thinks they have an advantage on Google and Apple is their long history with users, which spans almost 20 years for certain folks who signed up for Yahoo’s service way back in the day. As stated by Business Insider’s source, “Gmail users have only had their accounts for 10 years. Yahoo has many 20 year old accounts. Back then people used to email themselves a lot — store things. To surface that kind of data usefully is exciting.”

Another key element for Yahoo is CEO Marissa Mayer’s involvement. Marissa was employee #20 at Google, and was actually the first female engineer to be employed at Google. She was a key player in many of the services that most of still use to this day, including Maps, Gmail, and Google News. If anyone would know where to align a product directly against one of Google’s offerings, it would be Yahoo’s CEO.

As to when we may see what Yahoo is cooking up, sources state Mayer is pushing for a Q2 pilot launch.

Now, speaking personally, I don’t think I know anyone that would be willing to give a Yahoo personal assistant a try. Siri and Google Now both leave users fulfilled enough, offering plenty of helpful data whenever it may be needed. There are plenty of Yahoo users left, but could the number of those users seriously penetrate the digital personal assistant market? Yahoo will need to add more than just the ability to index decade-old email to get me excited.

What is your take on Yahoo’s ambitions? Need another assistant in your life?

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This article seems to be for the iphone people not so much android. I haven’t really used yahoo since google came into existence.

Bryan

Serious question. Who uses Yahoo and what for? Email, news? I’m not even sure what Yahoo as a company is anymore. I’m not sure anyone can turn them around.

calculatorwatch

Their weather and news apps are decent. And I was using Aviate until they took away most of the features to turn it into a Yahoo version of GEL, with terrible widget support.

jimt

I will sometimes click on yahoo financial to look at a stock.

Paradisimo

Thieves use Yahoo to sign up for free email addresses so they can place fraudulent Web orders. Ever since Yahoo released hundreds of thousands of email addresses back to the general population I have seen a HUGE spike in fraudulent orders using Yahoo e-mails. The reason being that instead of [email protected] they can actually create half-believable email addresses through Yahoo. That’s seriously the only valid reason I have found for why anyone would use Yahoo.

scastro87

I guess it’s only for people that have Yahoo emails, but if you have an android, you’re probably using Gmail anyway, so what would be the point?

trumpet444

My yahoo email account, that I signed up for when I was about 14, is so chock full of spam that it’d be a nightmare to try and seriously use today

Strange this is the first I have heard of that. With all the S6 testing, no one noticed this? I would have to say this is a pretty big problem.

mcdonsco

To run on what? Sheesh…

MReprogle

The chances of any a piece of Yahoo software on my device….

mickeyB88

The weather app is apparently pretty good.

Turb0wned

Yahoo sports is pretty good to. Other than weather and sports though….

Scott

Still think Google Now is overrated. It is a serious battery hog, slow, has limited customization, and seems to require multiple steps to make an appointment or set a reminder, compared to Siri. I’ll give it a go! I’m especially excited to see Cortana make an appearance.

mcdonsco

My only issue with google now is I wish it would read into my exchange account.

TC Infantino

Just wait until the NSA releases their personal assistant app. It will be able to retrieve anything, and I mean Anything you have transmitted through any electronic means, including transcripts of phone conversations. Think of how helpful that will be! /s

Turb0wned

Yeah I used it when it first came out but realized I ended up not using it enough for me to loss battery life over.

VAVA Mk2

I use Google Now all the time and love it

MicroNix

At least Google Now knows the difference between a scallion and stallion. Siri while witty can be pretty dumb.